Start of the semester: 195,000 students expected

17.10.2019 | More students than ever before are expected to be enrolled at the colleges and universities in the Brain City Berlin by the winter semester 2019/20. According to an initial projection, the Senate expects up to 195,000 enrolled students. Berlin is popular with students from all over the world, especially because of the high quality of research and teaching.

 

The new semester has begun. One number is of particular interest each time: How many students does the city expect? According to an initial forecast, up to 195,000 students are enrolled in the current winter semester 2019/20 at the eleven state, two confessional and 28 private universities in the Brain City Berlin. This was announced by the Berlin Senate Chancellery at the start of the semester. 

 

 

195,000 students in Berlin in the winter semester 2019/20: What is the composition of this number?

  • 160,000 students are currently enrolled at the eleven state universities - this is the result of their October quick report to the Senate Chancellery - Science and Research.
     
  • 30,000 students are enrolled at Berlin's 2 denominational and 28 private universities - this can be predicted from the experience of the past 2 years.
     
  • The total number of late registrations is expected to be up to 5,000 students.

Around 37,000 people have newly enrolled for studies at the eleven state universities in the Brain City Berlin. Most of the new enrollments are in Bachelor's degree programs. Almost 10,000 new students are taking up a master's degree course. Overall, the number of students in the 2019/20 winter semester is expected to be higher than in the previous year, when 192,000 enrolments were counted. However, it will only be possible to say exactly when the final figures from Berlin's universities are available.

 

"The fact that we are expecting more than 190,000 students this year as well, and that a good third of the newly enrolled first-year students recently came from abroad, confirms the high quality of our universities and the attractiveness of the city as a whole," said the Governing Mayor Michael Müller. He emphasized that Berlin has developed into the largest science location in Germany over the past three decades thanks to reunification, and is now one of the most popular places for students worldwide.
Incidentally, in 1989, the year the Wall came down, Berlin had 133,000 students - around 60,000 fewer than today: 108,000 students were enrolled at universities in the western part of the city, 25,000 in the eastern part of Berlin.

The excellence of research and teaching makes Berlin popular among students worldwide

The high quality of research & teaching in the Brain City Berlin was recently confirmed by the funding of the Berlin University Alliance within the framework of the Excellence Strategy (ExStra) of the federal and state governments. The title of Excellence University, for which the Technische Universität Berlin, the Freie Universität Berlin and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin jointly applied with the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, was awarded to the alliance in July. The award is accompanied by permanent funding of 15 to 28 million euros per year.

As the European Research Council (ERC) announced last week, four of the highly endowed ERC Synergy Grants will also go to Berlin-Brandenburg. The Research Council approved applications for transnational collaborative projects of Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Berlin Leibniz Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) and the Potsdam Geoforschungs-Zentrum (GFZ). ERC Synergy Grants support project teams of 2 to 4 researchers* with up to ten million euros for six years. The aim is "to make discoveries at the interfaces between established disciplines and to make substantial progress at the frontiers of knowledge". (vdo)